Ten meters from the dungeon with the murderous balls, a battle raged. Three insects, each the size of a Mini Cooper, attacked a hornless rhino. The insects looked like grasshoppers, but with four arms instead of two, each tipped with sharp protrusions that caught the light. They darted in and out with unnerving precision, landing blows every time they got close enough. The rhino’s thick fur worked like armor, absorbing most of the damage, though here and there, I spotted patches of blood where the bugs had broken through.

The rhino wasn’t just standing there, though. It charged at them, trying to trample the insects with sheer force, but they were too quick. Every time the rhino lunged or tried to stampede over one, the creature would zip away, leaving it to charge at nothing but air. It was a dance of sorts, though a brutal one, with the rhino growing more frustrated by the second, as it just couldn’t seem to land a hit on the swift, skittering bugs.

Luckily, we left the dungeon invisible. We stood and watched the battle for a minute or two before Mahya asked telepathically, “Shall we take care of them, or leave it for another day?”

“Let’s leave that for another day. We’ve fought enough,” I replied.

“Okay. Sneak around quietly so we won’t be heard,” she said.

“We better fly out of here. Al, get on my back,” I said.

Al touched my shoulder and climbed onto my back. “Mahya, do you need help finding Rue?” I asked.

“No. I’m already on him.”

I rose into the air, flying beyond the city limits. About a kilometer out, I said, “That’s enough, let’s land.”

“We should fly to our hills. I don’t feel like walking. I’m exhausted,” Mahya said.

“You’re spoiled, that’s what you are,” I teased.

“That too,” she said with a laugh.

I became visible, and a moment later, Rue and Mahya appeared as well. She immediately stuck her tongue out and winked at me.

I shook my head in resignation.

We took a few days to rest, and during that time, I focused on building a shield spell. I remembered the shield I’d seen an adventurer cast before the hell dungeon and wanted something similar. The last dungeon made it clear we needed something like that. It took me a day to design the runes and magic script for a shield that would protect against physical damage, but things got trickier when it came to magic. I quickly realized I couldn’t make it block magic in general—it had to be specific to each school of magic, which made it much more complicated. I asked Mahya and Al for a list of all the existing schools, and the list was enormous.

Fire Magic

Water Magic

Earth Magic

Air Magic

Lightning Magic

Ice Magic

Magma Magic

Wood Magic

Arcane Magic

Illusion Magic

Necromancy

Divination Magic

Conjuration Magic

Transmutation Magic

Enchantment Magic

Healing Magic

Time Magic

Gravity Magic

Shadow Magic

Light Magic

Blood Magic

Sound Magic

Psionics (Mind Magic)

Rune Magic

Space Magic

Soul Magic

Beast Magic

Metal Magic

Chaos Magic

Weather Magic

Magnetism Magic

Dream Magic

Poison Magic

Spirit Magic

Stone Magic

Explosion Magic

Life Magic

Death Magic

Storm Magic

Crystal Magic

Void Magic

Illumination Magic

Sand Magic

Glass Magic

Mirror Magic

Black Magic

Curse Magic

Charm Magic

Plant Magic

Lava Magic

Star Magic

Tidal Magic

Frost Magic

Force Magic

Seismic Magic

Vibration Magic

Ash Magic

Cloud Magic

Metal Magic

Soundwave Magic

Plague Magic

Smoke Magic

Ember Magic

Spectral Magic

Energy Magic

Kinetic Magic

Dreamwalking Magic

Shapeshifting Magic

Petrification Magic

Phantom Magic ...

They had more types to add, but I stopped listing them. No matter how large I could make the mesh, it was too much for a single spell. After some thought, I settled on the four major elements, death, and black magic. Even those were pushing the limits of my ability to fit everything into the mesh.

While I was working on the original plan for the spell, something finally clicked. I’d been feeling this nagging sense that something was off with my spells for a while now, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it—until now. All the spells and abilities I had, whether I bought them, learned them on my own, or received them from the Guidance, advanced in levels and improved over time. But my own spells? They were static, stuck at the same level, no matter how much I used them.

Take Harvest Snake, for example. That one I understood—it didn’t change because I rarely used it. But Harvest Herbivore? I’d cast that over 500 times. And Harvest Mana Crystal? I had cast that spell so many times I lost count ages ago. Yet neither spell had improved. Harvest Mana Crystal still worked fine on small to medium monsters, but if the monster was any bigger, I had to cast it multiple times, or I’d lose some of the mana to dissipation. It made little sense.

Even Mana Dart had progressed. I remember when I leveled it up to two darts when I was taking out the cats, and it jumped to three when I fought in the Gorge. So why hadn’t my other spells followed suit? It wasn’t just odd—it was downright frustrating. Spells that should’ve evolved and become stronger with use were stuck. I’d been hammering away at them for what felt like forever, and nothing had changed. I was missing some hidden key or a crucial step that made them grow like the others.

I vaguely remember a book from Lis that I’d come across and learned its language. It was something like Spell Progression or Spell Advancement, or at least that’s what stuck in my head. So I went looking for it. Took me a few hours, though. Without remembering the exact title, I couldn’t locate it by feeling like I usually did. I kept sifting through everything, retracing my steps until I eventually found it.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

It was called Natural Spell Progression Via Mana Pathways. No wonder it took me so long—I’d only remembered part of the name.

For two days, I poured over the book, and it quickly became clear what the issue was with my spells. It turns out that each spell had a built-in component that allowed it to create new mana pathways as it was used. The spell didn’t have a progression element built into it, but mana pathways creation instead. The more the pathways progressed, the more efficient and powerful the spell became. My spells, however, didn’t do that. Instead of generating new pathways, they simply used the main mana channels in my hands.

At first glance, that didn’t seem like a huge issue—except for two very important details. One: because no new mana pathways were forming, my body wasn’t improving or adapting to cast the spells more efficiently. And two, which was much more critical: the lack of new pathways made my spells far more expensive than they should’ve been.

Take Harvest Mana Crystal, for example. It was the cheapest of the lot at 50 mana per cast, but the moment I needed to cast it more than once on larger monsters, the cost shot up. Harvest Herbivore? That one ran me a hefty 350 mana per cast—ridiculously high for a harvesting spell. And the Harvest Snake? It only cost 70 mana, but I only used it on small snakes for their venom sacs. If we were dealing with bigger snakes or needed to harvest more than that, the cost would scale up fast.

After a quick mental calculation, I realized that if I had to harvest a snake in Tuonela using this spell, it would cost me somewhere in the ballpark of 400 to 600 mana. That’s an insane mana price for one cast.

I also realized something else—those small channels I’d discovered in my body back in Vegas, the ones I referred to as ‘stage 2 channels,’ weren’t actually an integral part of me. I had always assumed they were just part of my natural development, but it turned out they formed because of learning new spells and skills. It wasn’t just random growth—those new abilities created the channels. And the more I used those spells and skills, the more those channels expanded and strengthened. So, the progression wasn’t just about the spells themselves; it was my body adapting and creating new pathways to handle the magic more efficiently.

I had no idea how to build the mana pathway component into my spells. I had no idea how to even begin. It was clear I lacked a ton of knowledge on the subject, and that was a problem. So, I looked through the books, and found a few that seemed promising—but of course, they were thick and packed with that dense, awful language I’ve always hated in magic texts. I knew diving into them would be a long, exhausting, and frustrating process. The kind that would probably leave me tearing my hair out by the end.

Right now, I didn’t have the time for them. We had a city full of dungeons we were itching to clear, and getting bogged down in magical theory wasn’t part of the plan. So, I set those books aside and went back to working on my spell, knowing it would be less than optimal without those mana pathways.

Oh, well. Better than nothing.

When I went back to work on my spell, I made a few changes to reduce its mana cost. I added some “if>then” conditions to the structure, so the spell would only use as much mana as needed to stop a projectile or incoming spell. It would still be expensive—about 50 or maybe 100 mana to block a minor attack or weak spell, and it could go up to 500 mana for something more serious. But given the situation, it was better than having no shield.

The good thing was, I knew this spell would work for me, especially with my new Mana Siphon ability in play. For Al, though, it would have limited use. Still useful, but not something he could rely on constantly. Mahya, on the other hand, was a different story. With her limited mana pool, which she needed mostly for her skills, this spell would end up doing more harm than good. It would drain her dry in no time, leaving her without the mana she needed to be effective. So while it was a decent solution for me, it wasn’t something we could all count on.

After I finished the original design, it took me another three days to actually build the spell. It was a tedious process—creating a mesh the size of a Pilates ball because the spell was so complex. Every step required precision. When I finally completed it, I double-checked everything to make sure it was all in place, no loose ends. Satisfied that the spell was solid, I closed it up.

And, of course, as always, my red light was flashing.

Congratulations, Wizard!

Through your skill, intellect, and mastery of the arcane arts, you have successfully created a new spell to hold a protective shield—one that has never existed in the annals of magic. The arcane forces have recognized this extraordinary achievement.

Please name your spell to finalize its creation: _______________.

I checked for any problematic language in the spell, but found nothing wrong. I didn’t try too hard to come up with an elaborate name, either. Ultimately, I just followed the system’s suggestion: Protective Shield. Simple, but it worked. I poured mana into the mesh, and the orb vanished as soon as I did. In its place, Protective Shield popped up on my profile under Wizard Spells. Just like that, it was officially part of my arsenal, and I was ready for the next dungeon.

----------------------------------------

I flew over the city to check on the monster situation. There were definitely more than after our last fishing operation, but still not as many as before we cleared a sizeable chunk of them. I reported my findings to the group, and Mahya asked, “Same method as last time?”

“Why not?” Al asked. “It works, why change it?”

It took us a full day to clean out the city again, using exactly the same methods. We stayed clear of the areas with the flying monsters, though. If we could deal with the earthbound ones from the air, the plan was to handle the flying ones from the ground in the future. At least, that was my understanding. No reason to fight them on their level and expose ourselves unnecessarily.

After the city was mostly clean, I asked the wind once again to locate the dungeons in the bug territory. With Al’s potion, we were confident this would be the easiest area to deal with. The wind led me to two locations. The first was in the basement of a half-destroyed building. Half the stairs were missing, and the ceiling looked dangerously unstable. The basement was dark, and it took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust enough to tell the difference between the portal and the wall.

One look at the building’s questionable stability, and I wasn’t too keen on leaving it as it was. After some thought, I flew back home, shut the house down despite Mahya’s protests, grabbed the core, and set it to absorb the building. It took another day, but in the end, all that remained was a sunken square in the ground, with the portal resting against one of its walls. Two bugs crawled out of the portal while the core was busy “eating” the structure. They were quick, but they didn’t stand a chance with me invisible and behind them and lightning at my command.

The second dungeon was deeper into the territory, in a large pit. The portal was in one wall, but because of the pit’s slant, it was partly vertically and partly horizontally, like it was sliding down the wall. It looked... unsettling, to say the least.

I had a shield, the territory was cleared, and I’d located the dungeons—tomorrow, another dungeon run—or maybe even multiple runs, depending on how things played out.